SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY


  • I do not avoid movies that have ugliness or wickedness portrayed in them, I avoid movies that stir up my ugly and wicked passions. This distinction is essential. And it may be that a movie or novel that one person finds insightful and beautiful, another will have to avoid because some aspects of it stir up particular passions he or she may struggle with. Each person is different. I myself have found that I cannot at all listen to secular music without it causing terrible problems in my inner life, but I can watch a movie that some might consider inappropriate and it provide fodder for prayerful thought and contemplation for many days.Praying In The Rain,

    More Thoughts on Movies, Holiness, and Brownies
    Fr. Michael Gillis

  • Let all carnal sweetness be as bitterness to you; carnal loss, as gain.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it.

    —Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

  • The unrest incident to youth, the vacillating response to disparate appeals, the insatiable hunger for whatever appears attractive or beautiful will subside, and a steady orientation towards the essential and decisive become dominant.

    Supernatural readiness to change should grow with age..

    Transformation in Christ
    Dietrich von Hildebrand

  • Whenever the process of the soul’s submission to God reaches its full stride, man will never be able to bear any pleasure, comfort, or corruptive seduction that draws him away from his state of submission to God and his enjoyment of his obedience to him. This is freedom, absolute freedom.

    —Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life

  • It is better to elude the passions by the recollection of the virtues than by resisting and disputing with them. For when the passions leave their place and arise for battle, they
    imprint on the mind images and idols, and this warfare has great force, able to weaken the mind and violently to perturb and confuse a man’s thinking. But if a man acts by the first rule we have mentioned, when the passions are repulsed they leave no trace in the mind.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • Love is the Kingdom, whereof the Lord mystically promised His disciples to eat in His Kingdom. For when we hear Him say, ‘Ye shall eat and drink at the table of My Kingdom’ what do we suppose we shall eat, if not love? Love is sufficient to nourish a man instead of food and drink. This is the wine ‘which maketh glad the heart of man’. Blessed is he who partakes of this wine! Licentious men have drunk this wine and felt
    shame; sinners have drunk it and have forgotten the pathways of stumbling; drunkards have drunk this wine and become fasters; the rich have drunk it and desired poverty; the poor have drunk it and been enriched with hope; the sick have drunk it and become strong; the unlearned have taken it and been made wise.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • When temptation overtakes the iniquitous man, he has no confidence wherewith to call upon God, nor to expect salvation from Him, since in the days of his ease he stood
    aloof from God’s will.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • Love sinners, but hate their works; and do not despise them for their faults, lest you be tempted by the same.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • When temptation overtakes the iniquitous man, he has no confidence wherewith to call upon God, nor to expect salvation from Him, since in the days of his ease he stood
    aloof from God’s will.

    —St. Isaac the Syrian